One, Mr. Francis John Adah from Benue state has allegedly defrauded Four-Five intending university students in Imo State of over Sixty Million Naira.
The Societymirror gathered that the suspect operates a Diploma programme at Vila Maria Complex, Owerri where the 45 students were on admission and with over 15 academic and non academic staff.
Mr. Adah had claimed that the programme was an affiliation of the Amadu Bello University, Zaria and students who passed a certain examination on completion of a one year studies in the learning Centre would gain direct entry into the university.
Some of the victims who spoke to our reporter said they later discovered that entire programme was fake after they were taken to the University of Port Harcourt, Uniport, Choba, Rivers State to write the Direct Entry examination.
They disclosed that they all paid into the account number provided by the suspect between N800, 000 to N1, 200, 00, based on the course of their study, to register for the programme.
According to one of the victim who simply identified himself as Ebere, "we have been attending classes at the Vila Maria Center since July last year. And none of us had doubt about the reality of the programme because of the level of commitment from both the man and his staff.
"However it was during the examination that our eyes opened. At the exam hall, we were given photocopied exam sheet which we discovered to be the 2016 past question paper of the university. At that point, we suspected foul play and demanded explanation from the invigilators.
"Initially, they assured us that all was real but after much persuasion, they opened up to us that all was fake and ran away. At that point, we started calling the man but he had disappeared and his phone numbers switched off.
"We ran to report the matter to Choba police station and we have also reported it to the State Intelligence Bereau, SIB of Imo State Police headquarters in Owerri. There they told us to go home while they commence investigation over the matter."
"As we speak, some of us are depressed, frustrated and don't know what to do now. Some of our parents gave up all they had to pay for this programme for us and today, they are disappointed too.
"All we want is for the police to help us arrest the man and make him refund us all the money he collected from us." another victim who spoke on basis of anonymity added.
At the time of filing this report, efforts to get Imo State spokesman to react over the matter was yet to received response after several attempts to reach him through phone calls yielded no result.
